1. Introduction
1.1. Legal and contextual basis
1. The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (the
Committee) was established with a mandate to promote and protect the rights
enshrined in the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (African
Children‟s Charter). In particular, under Article 42 (a) (ii), the Committee is expected
to formulate and lay down principles and rules aimed at protecting the rights and
welfare of children in Africa.
2. Through the Reporting procedure provided for under Article 43 of the African
Children‟s Charter, the Committee interacts with States parties by reviewing their
reports and issuing observations and recommendations aimed at improving the
implementation of the rights of the child where the desired standard of
implementation is deemed not to have been achieved.
3.
The right to birth registration is one of the rights that consistently appears not
to be fully implemented by States parties. In its observations and recommendations
to the states that have so far submitted at least one report, the Committee has
expressed concern about the low rate of birth registration.1 Millions of children go
unregistered every year. According to the UN News Centre, a 2013 UNICEF Report
reveals that 230 million children under the age of five have not had their birth
registered, and the lowest rate of birth registration is in South Asia and in SubSaharan Africa.2 It is believed that 20 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa do not
have a birth certificate.3 A number of factors explain this state of affairs including
poverty, lack of education, discrimination against women, and membership of
certain indigenous ethnic groups or belonging to vulnerable social groups such as
refugees or migrants. A lack of decentralized, effective, well managed and
affordable civil registration systems are also to blame. As a consequence, children
become more vulnerable to all sorts of abuses such as recruitment into armed
1
See Recommendations and Observations sent to the Governments of Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Libya, Kenya,
Mali, Tanzania and Uganda available at http://acerwc.org/state-reports/ accessed 3 October 2013.
2
UN News Centre ‘One in three children do not officially exist, UNICEF reports’ (11 December 2013)
3
See Humanium ‘The right to an identity- The global situation: A look at a child identity across the globe’
available at http://www.humanium.org/en/world/right-to-identity/ accessed 25 January 2014.
2